Five Personal Development Tips

Here are five really useful tips for you to use in the area of personal development.

1.Your Mindset

You need to have or you need to acquire a mindset around personal development.

What do I mean by that? You have to believe that you are born as a person to grow and to develop, that you have abilities to do that, and one of your lifelong objectives is to become the best person you can be in your life.

Having a mindset of personal development means you are going to invest time and energy in it. You must have that mindset of giving your personal development the highest priority.

2. Talents and strengths

It’s a fact that we all get better at the things that we naturally do easily and well.

Identify your talents and strengths, your unique abilities, whatever they happen to be that have so far brought you success in your life and which you would like to grow and develop in the future. These are areas of skill that you can become really good in and you can fain an enormous amount of motivation and satisfaction in the process.

Identify and build on your talents and strengths.

3. Your current and desired future situation

You need to create a gap which you need to be able to fill with personal development activities. You’ll only know what that gap is if you can briefly write down where you are at the moment in your life, what you’re good at, what’s brought you success and what are some of your challenges going forward. Look forward maybe one or two year and picture yourself at that time. What is it you’re doing differently, how have you grown, how have you developed and what sphere of influence do you have. Now identify the gap between the two and identify in particular those talents and abilities you need to grow to move yourself forward in your personal development to fill that gap.

4. Personal learning activities

Identify your own personal learning preferences, those are activities that really enable you to learn quickly and easily. This may be methods outlined below

METHODS

SUGGESTIONS FOR USE

1.Coaching for Development

Obtain coaching from others to learn to grow your capabilities

When taking on new responsibilities.

When growing your insights, knowledge and skills.

When getting others’ help to learn from their experiences.

2. Coaching for Performance Improvement

Ask for specific feedback from your manager and ask for help to make performance improvements..

Carry out definite tasks on your own generally within a certain time limit, with a requirement to report back to your manager.

Useful in broadening your experience.

METHODS

SUGGESTIONS FOR USE

6. Log books

A book in which you record learning and development activities.

Useful for tracking your own progress.

7. Demonstrations

A training method in which an instructor shows you, by actual performance, what to do, how to do it, why it is necessary, when and where it is done.

Useful if you like to learn from watching others.

8. Question and answer sessions

An interchange of information between yourself and your manager.

Useful to get feedback and inputs from your manager in specific topics.

9. Discussion method

A method of training which involves you being a part of a learning group or community.

Useful when sharing experiences and best practices.

10. Secondments

Involves you moving to other sections, departments or organizations for a significant period eg six months, to develop your skill and knowledge in certain areas.

Useful to gain specific experience, knowledge or skills in other areas to broaden knowledge/and experiences.

11. Job rotation

Involves you moving to different jobs to gain wider experience.

Useful when moving in to more general management roles.

12. Work rotation

Movement from one area of work to a different area of work.

Useful where knowledge of a similar work activity will help you in the performance of your work.

Whatever are your preferred learning methods use them to help bridge that personal development gap.

Make sure you create a personal development plan showing all of these learning methods over a 12 month period. Review the plan and upgrade it as your personal development needs change.

5. Get yourself a mentor.

A mentor is a person to whom you can turn to for advice, help, guidance and insight to assist you in your personal development journey. They will have more experience than you. You will respect them. You will like them. They will also like you and want you to succeed in your personal development.

You can meet with this person regularly to get their help in all of the other methods that you are using and you can gain their valuable insights to speed up the process of your personal development.